It was sometime around 1983 or ’84 that my best buddy from high school and I determined to catch a screening of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “Parsifal” at Lehigh University. Neither of us knew much about the opera at that point, but we both loved the film “Excalibur” and were at the very least familiar with the mystical prelude Wagner had composed.
As my friend climbed into the car, he enthused, “I think we’re in for a real treat. Listen to this!” Then he read to me the synopsis from Milton Cross’ “Complete Stories of the Great Operas.” When he reached the part where Parsifal snatches Klingsor’s spear out of midair, destroying his power, we were both like, “Whoaaa.” We were primed for some serious action!
When we arrived, we learned that the film was being presented in an auditorium with a raked floor. I remember it was raked, because at some point during the screening, an empty bottle of spirits rolled past our feet, clanking against the chair legs.
The film was shown the old-fashioned way, employing a 1970s-style high school movie projector, so that periodically the tail leader would run out and the lights would have to be switched on, so that the reels could be changed. Along the way, there were also a few technical difficulties, significantly padding the film’s already four-hour-plus running time.
Anyway, it was excruciating – which is to say, we enjoyed ourselves immensely. There was so much to laugh at and groan through. The actor who played Klingsor was totally out of shape. When he raised his spear, he must have had an aneurysm or something, because instead of hurling it like a javelin, as described by Milton Cross, he simply tumbled into a ravine. We were especially amused by the revelation toward the end that the entire production was supposed to have taken place inside a gigantic bust of Wagner. Or more accurately, his death mask.
Otherwise, Syberberg’s was a fairly straightforward interpretation, though curiously he chose to have actors stand in for the singers on the film’s soundtrack, a decision I can’t say made it any less silly. Oh yeah, there was also a passage, just before the death mask revelation, that had knights processing down a long stone hallway, lined with swastika flags (???). Obviously, this was a work of genius.
By the time it finally ended, and someone switched on the lights for probably the sixth or seventh time, we staggered out of the building, wearing conspiratorial grins, only to discover a fog had rolled in. It was now ludicrously late. Driving back on Route 22 was like crossing the North Sea in a dragon boat.
I arrived home around 2:00 in the morning, and my mother was on pins and needles. What happened? What had we gotten up to? I shared a mercifully abridged account of our Wagnerian adventure. We were not dead in a ditch. Nor were we rotting in a jail cell. We were watching “Parsifal.”
I think of this every year on Good Friday, since the Good Friday Spell of Act III is one of the high points of the opera and frequently excerpted. Naturally, this entails a Google search to see if the film has been posted online. In previous years, I’ve come up with only a stray clip, but this year the angels are with me, as I find someone has posted the entire film on YouTube in two parts.
Of course, last year, I finally broke down and purchased the rare, out-of-print DVD from eBay.
This Good Friday is very good indeed.
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